Richard Branson Quotes

Mentors don't have to be the Daymond Johns or the Mark Cubans. A person running a successful bodega or a tax firm in your community for the last 20 years, that person is working just as much as the individual who's running General Mills.

One of the best programs that the federal government sponsors is the Small Business Innovation Research program, in which more than 2.5 percent of federal research and development funding at the largest agencies goes directly to small businesses.

I've had a lot of help... from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, venture capitalists. They've helped me out a ton.

I think it's smart to always keep an eye on the companies that sit within incubator communities, which bring together the skills and expertise needed to grow an enterprise.

Early on in your career, find someone better than yourself to run the business on a day-to-day basis. Remove yourself, maybe even from the building, and from the nitty-gritty. That way, you're going to be able to see the bigger picture and think of new areas to go into.

I went to a woman for advice about how to be in business, but I learned a great deal from men.

I've helped some of my classmates on how to strategize to get to the next level of their businesses. And it's interesting, because here I am sitting there from the entertainment industry and the fashion industry, and I'm giving a billionaire that has a business that's been in his family for 300 years - I'm giving him advice about strategy!

We have this powerful lever at Google Ventures, which is to invest $200 million a year. This is a huge lever. It's not all going into one place; it's going into lots of start ups and founders and entrepreneurs, all of which are levers to try and change the world in one way or another.

Mentors, by far, are the most important aspects of businesses.

I definitely will reach out to Cuban in the near future for advice going forward. Now that I'll be on the business side of things - and he's had a lot of success with that - that would be a guy to go to.

Martha Stewart convinced me to have a business. She sometimes takes a very personal interest, and she kept saying, 'You have to open your own business,' and gave me chances. She took my cakes on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.' I met a lot of people through her.

Entrepreneurs can benefit a lot from the right help and advice, and you can avoid costly mistakes. You can get incredible leverage in hiring people who wouldn't even talk to you if you have the right help. An investor isn't about money - it's about the help and advice you can get.

How could anyone ever build a company if they didn't have investments? It doesn't make any sense.

The most important thing you need to make one of those incubator/accelerator type projects work is to have some people who understand how to do it and want to do it in a particular place.

What the entrepreneur gets on 'Dragons' Den' is direct access to people with masses of experience who can actually make quick decisions.

I've always been very passionate about investing time in and sharing my expertise with other entrepreneurs.

Some incubators, like Y Combinator and TechStars, were started by successful entrepreneurs wishing to help the next generation learn from their experiences. Other programs, such as Viterbi Startup Garage and Austin Technology Incubator, were created by universities to help young entrepreneurs bridge the knowledge gap from student to funded company.

While it can be challenging for women with disruptive, technology-based ideas to acquire significant funding, in my experience, once I was able to raise that funding, I was met with droves of people offering to help me fulfill my dreams.

You need to create a place where young students can flesh out their business plans and further develop their research projects and then have a fund to help students get started in their businesses.

TechStars offers a network, and being a part of that network is an awesome opportunity.

If I'm with my dad, yeah, he's going to talk a good bit about the business. He just kind of mentors me and tells me what he's thinking about my stuff.

Floyd has done a lot for me financially and has taught me a lot about business. He did great in making money during his career and he tells me a lot of what he's working on.

I think we should support entrepreneurialship.

No matter what level you're starting at, it's about not only utilizing your time, but your resources and network. For me, I started my company with a small amount of savings; I never had investors and I was lucky in the sense that I had models and connections in the fashion industry who were willing to give me advice early on. So really, for anyone starting a new business, it's really important to seek out mentors and knowledge from those who have come before you. And to not let that be discouraging, but to take that advice and really learn from it and mold it to what you're trying to do.

The best advice I ever got was from Lee Iacocca.... It was get into a business where you can be a big fish, not the little fish. Get into a business where you can be a change agent, where you can make a difference.